Main » Brett Kavanaugh’s Second Day of Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings

Brett Kavanaugh’s Second Day of Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings

05 September 2018

The first hearing was primarily used for opening statements, and since today's event will open up the floor to questions, Kavanaugh will undoubtedly be asked about how he intends to conduct himself on the Supreme Court.

Kavanaugh, his wife, Ashley, and eldest daughter entered the committee room with Grassley just after 9:30 am.

President Donald Trump's second nominee to the high court was speaking Tuesday on the first day of his Senate confirmation hearings. Sources said that during a conference call on the eve of the hearing, Senate Democrats debated staging a mass walkout, or refusing to show up at all.

By not staging a walkout, however, Democrats also allowed themselves to become part of the process and grill Kavanaugh in the upcoming hearings, hoping to mobilize opposition to his candidacy.

In citing examples of judicial independence, Kavanaugh mentioned a 1954 ruling ending racial segregation in public schools and a 1974 ruling ordering President Richard Nixon to hand over subpoenaed materials during the Watergate scandal.

"A judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make the law". He also saying being a good judge means paying attention to words that are written-Constitution, statutes.

Though the men note that "these precedents. have not yet been applied to require a Supreme Court justice to recuse, they plot a trajectory that points unmistakably in that direction". And on the most contentious cases, the court tends to split into conservative and liberal sides.

If all goes according to Republicans' plans, the committee will vote later this month - nearly surely along straight party lines - to send his nomination to the full Senate in hopes of getting him on the court by the October 1 start of the 2018 term. That will go a long way toward pacifying activists in their base who demanded all stops be pulled in defeating Kavanaugh's confirmation, even if their previous nuclear-option strategy (authored by Harry Reid and Schumer) is what keeps Democrats from having any influence on the process at all.

"There are battles worth fighting, regardless of the outcome", Sen.

"We can not possibly move forward, Mr. Chairman, with this hearing", said Harris at the top of proceedings.

Some of the sessions have focused on making sure that he is comfortable "with people shouting him down" or being heckled by protesters.

"There's a 35-month black hole in your White House career where we've been denied access to any and all documents", Durbin said. "This is a mockery and a travesty of justice", shouted one woman.

Feinstein argued that Kavanaugh's opinion in Garza v. Hargan - a case the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia heard past year - showed that from her perspective, he was wrong on abortion.

'We need you to be a hero, ' yelled another woman.

As patience thinned and tempers flared, Sen.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, dismissed the complaints over missing documents as a distraction.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, referred to the Republican-appointed conservatives on the court headed by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.as the "Roberts Five" and said the justices were always looking for ways to benefit the "big fund-raisers and influencers of the Republican Party".

"That takes some backbone", he said of the justices who decided those cases. "Are people nervous about this concerned about this? Of course they are". Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the committee.

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